


Our sunset above Danube

by orphan_account



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama & Romance, F/M, M/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 10:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19332709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Chernobyl left Valery Legasov two gifts - the cost of lies and the cost of love.The events in Vienna made him think about them again.





	Our sunset above Danube

**Author's Note:**

> Russian version : https://ficbook.net/readfic/8364592

_1:14, August 22, 3 days before the beginning._

 

The balcony, immersed in darkness, for an instant lit up with bright white light - under deafening thunderclap lightning cut the sky in half and then disappeared. The rain fell like a sheer wall, the trees creaked under the force of the wind - but Valery Legasov remained completely still.

Sitting on a stool by the open window, finishing the fifth cigarette, he peered at the horizon above the capital which was quiet from the weather, but his eyes did not wander along the dark, flooded streets, on the black Volga in his yard — no, his eyes were turned to the west.

To Chernobyl.

It was so strange to feel hot cigarette smoke in the lungs, to feel the cold wind and moisture on his face - and at the same time know that every second, hour after hour and until the end of his days a small part of his body died, dissolved forever; to know that in the end in five years at most there will be nothing left of him.

Will he ever see such a summer storm in Moscow? 

Hardly.

In any case, he thought so.

Another gust of wind sharply turned the wall of rain toward his house, and a random drop, flying through the window, hit his cigarette. It went out with a hiss, leaving him in complete darkness - until the next lightning, of course.

Valery at first did not even notice. After a couple of seconds, he looked at the cigarette in his hand with surprised eyes. Then he looked up at the sky, which at that instant was lit up with violet lightning, spreading across the sky like a weeping willow, the branches of which seemed to have covered the whole of Moscow.

Valery blinked and then threw a cigarette butt in an ashtray. With a crunch, his sore back protested as he rose to his feet and sauntered to the bed. It was about two hours, maybe three. In principle, it didn’t make much difference - he was excused from the work at Pripyat for the whole week, and, oddly enough, again because of Chernobyl.

He undressed, carefully put his only glasses on the nightstand and wrapped himself in a blanket. For some reason now he felt that this night he could actually fall asleep, maybe even have a good rest. The noise of nature that was raging outside the window was calming him down, drowning out the noise in his own head - a constant background made of fragments of some thoughts and feelings, which were in a chaotic movement on the outskirts of his consciousness. Now there was silence. Valery sighed contentedly, feeling the dream taking him. That felt good...

"Ring, ring" - the old doorbell cracked nasty. He almost asked Andrei to go and have a look - he stopped himself with an unpleasant aftertaste in his mouth. The call sounded again and again, very annoyingly - and uneasily, Valery suddenly realized. Charkov's people called differently - their call was long and confident, for they knew their power over him. This one ... was more like a cry for help.

This thought made Valery literally roll off the bed and frantically grope for glasses. Something in the dark fell somewhere, but he was already hurrying to the door. He didn’t even look into the peephole - he just turned the only lock and opened the door wide - to freeze in place, like a deer caught in the headlights.

Before him stood Ulana Khomyuk, with water flowing from her like from a roof in early spring, hair in its entanglement resembling a bird's nest, and a medium-sized suitcase in her hand. And yet, no matter how the weather patched her up, she looked clearly better than he was in his white tank top and boxers.

(Valery suddenly thought that Homyuk would have looked good in any clothes, but internally waved off that idea as if it were an annoying fly; a noisy swarm of incoherent remarks apparently awakened in his head after a short lull).

How much time has passed since their last meeting? Three weeks? Month? Valery could not say for sure. He and Boris practically did not get out of Pripyat, observing the process of cleaning of the contamination zone every day. She, on the other hand, after taking the trail at the Sixth Hospital, run like a bloodhound across Moscow, catching eyewitnesses, collecting information about the catastrophe. However, towards the end of the summer, at the time of the particular rise of tension in relations with the KGB, Valery literally begged Khomyuk to lie low while - she had already visited the catacombs of Lubyanka once, he could not ask for more from her. Since then, in fact, they have not seen each other.

Finally, he coped with the primary shock and was able to say aloud (but on his ear he rather croaked):

“Ulana Yuryevna?..”

Valery was going to add something else (he no longer remembered what it was), but he suddenly found that he was drowning in the Arctic Sea of her eyes, floundering among the ice floes of her irises, and he was only able to frantically gasp for air every few seconds before he was covered again with a wave of strange feeling spreading in his chest.

In the meantime, such a crystal silence formed between them, so that the light bulb near his door could be heard. He was not sure now whether he had said her name out loud or was it in his head — but it would be strange to repeat. He also didn’t really understand what to do with his hands, and where to look, if not at her, because she blinded him like the sun, and at the same time constantly attracted his eyes-

Noise, noise, noise in the head again - it interfered with normal thinking because even some sanity literally sank in the chaos of half-sensations and half-thoughts - about himself, about others, about life. Half an hour ago he was thinking about his own mortality, and now he was worried about his appearance - _strange creatures, people are_ , he concluded to himself, powerlessly.

But Ulana suddenly smiled (for the first time with him, it seems) and extended a hand to him, still cold from the street, which made him involuntarily flinch.

“Hello, Valery”. After a moment of silence, she continued, “I know you have a lot of questions, but it’s better to ask them inside”.

Valery's brain finally started up completely, and he began to think convulsively; the questions, indeed, interrupting one another, jumped in his head, but without paying attention to them he stepped aside, casting his gaze to the floor, and invited her to enter.

Khomyuk hung her drenched coat in the hallway, put down the suitcase and turned to him.

“Shcherbina mentioned that your place is “clean” ”.

He didn’t immediately realize that she wasn’t talking about the order (or lack thereof) in his apartment.

“Yes, you know, a month ago, someone broke in and turned my flat upside down, and at the same time carried out several valuable things ... So I had to clean up”

He looked at her expressively, and the woman nodded. That's what it means - to go from Chernobyl to the Committee meetings for four months in a row - he began to communicate with code even at home, even with those whom he fully trusted.

“Can I use your toilet?”

“What? I mean, y-yes, of course, down the corridor, the first door on the right”. Legasov vaguely waved his hand, then clasped them both into the lock, then immediately pulled himself up and lowered them at the seams. If you think about it a bit, then Khomyuk was the second person in his life who saw him like this in his apartment - not in an official suit, not even just in a shirt - but in a tank top. And shorts. Because of this realisation, he literally did not know where to put himself, and from awkwardness, his stomach twisted.

Andrei would have been laughing shamelessly at him, that's for sure...

As soon as the woman went the other way, he hurried into the bedroom - at the second step he ran into a coffee table in the hallway, hissed from pain in his toes, picked up the fallen things somehow, and at last hobbled to the room. In the pale light of a yellow light bulb, he rushed to look for his home pants and shirt — he did not fasten, but at least covered his shoulders. Legasov caught himself standing by the mirror and trying to smooth his hair messed by the sleep.

 

The steam rose from the mug of hot tea in clubs, but as soon as he tried to drink it, his glasses immediately became fogged up, so Valery simply held her tightly in his hands - focusing on her warmth, he was less worried.

Khomyuk took a sip from the saucer (does she really do everything with such grace?) and, setting it aside, clasped her hands together, as if preparing for something serious. Perhaps it was so.

“I would like to talk about Vienna”.

“Oh,” he managed to squeeze out of himself. Yes, if you think about it, her appearance in his apartment in the middle of the night was very well explained by the IAEA conference, which was four days away from now.

“Shcherbina called yesterday and said that I was made part of the delegation. I understand that it is unlikely that the government would bring me there by its free will”.

 _Oh_ , Valery now thought to himself. Involuntarily, he wanted to look back at the table where laid the approved text of the 400-page report which looked more like the publication of “War and Peace”, and a draft of his last letter to the Central Committee - in each of 5 of them and in all telephone conversations he, among other things, always necessarily mentioned Khomyuk and the need for her to attend the conference. At best, he was promised they would think about it. At worst - he was said to know his place. That is why he did not even hope that he would achieve his goal.

Then he realized it was Boris. The list of impossible things that this “careerist”, who hid his kind heart with all his strength, managed to do, became even longer.

Valery, however, did not say anything yet, and Ulana continued.

“I was told to be in Moscow on 23th, at the preliminary assembly of the delegation, was told the hotel where I would live before departure - but first I needed to talk to you because then there would be no time - and no opportunity for it”.

She did not say that most likely she had to lie a lot the last day in order to be here without a “tail”, had to carefully choose her way so as not to stumble upon any black Volga - and she did not say that all the time before and during the conference they would be like under a cap. But he understood all this anyway.

“And what interests you?” He asked instead in a hollow, hoarse voice instead. Tea had a very interesting shade - it looked like iodine.

“What will you say to the commission in Vienna?”

He silently stood up and reached for the cabinet with vodka. This night was going to be a long one.

 

***

 

_9:15, August 22, 3 days before the beginning._

 

The first thing that greeted him on waking was the smell of roasting scrambled eggs with sausage and the murmur of a boiling kettle. Then came the pain in the back from the night on the couch, and right after it - the pain in the head from what was drunk and expressed.

He, not yet fully awake, mechanically put on his glasses, hitting himself in the eye with an earpiece, and sagged off to the source of life - the kitchen.

Valery came in when Ulana Yuryevna, being in her big glasses, was actively writing something, sitting at the table, while sipping from the saucer, which she held with her other hand (Valery’s head was spinning just from the sight of it, but the action seemed so natural to her as if she had been doing it every morning at breakfast. Maybe it was so). Musya was sitting on her lap, and when pencil stopped crossing over the paper for a couple of seconds, the woman, apparently unconsciously, stroked the cat on the withers.

Khomyuk was so absorbed in work that he had to cough for her to notice his presence. “I beg your pardon, Valery,” she said, putting everything aside, “that I took the initiative, but I didn’t want to wake you up, so I decided to at least do something useful.”

“You always do only the useful, Ulana Yuryevna”.

She smiled at him like yesterday. There was something in that smile that made the corners of his lips lift up (but he stopped them in time).

“Call me Ulana”.

He nodded, and she stood, turning to the stove. _When was the last time I woke up to the smell of breakfast?_ he asked himself. After Andrei, he...

Suddenly, his brain finally caught on - the night arrival and subsequent conversations were not the fruit of his sick mind, she really did come - and she would really go with him to Vienna.

For some reason, this thought made him dizzy - maybe it was actually from lack of sleep and hangover, but still, he had to lean sharply on the table. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled - and, opening them, he met with the anxious gaze of a woman.

He waved his hand dismissively. To occupy himself, he began to cut sandwiches, and then reached for cookies (Andrei always laughed at him, that you could always find only one product at his home - and that were pastries); Valery smiled at his own thoughts.

His kitchen was not that big, so a couple of times they almost collided, but in the end they had quite a decent breakfast for the two. Sitting down again at the table, he could finally consider what Ulana was doing before his arrival - there lay the opened report of the delegation and next to it there were a lot of sheets with notes, with varying degrees of organization. Going from one paper to another, it was possible to trace how before dawn her handwriting was still neat, even graceful, while, as she wrote, confidence in her own thoughts was felt - and then the dream began to overwhelm her, and initially straight letters and numbers gradually floated, so that at the end they would turn into an almost unreadable set of eyelets - but still she stubbornly continued her work. However, the last sheet, which was in front of her at the moment when he entered, was half full of the same neat text.

(Valery suddenly had a feeling of deja vu - how many scientific works did he look at in this way, having met dawn at his table with a bitten pencil in his hands?).

Catching her gaze, he nodded at the paper. "Suggesting edits?"

“Rather, my personal comments”.

“All right”.

But then he suddenly thought that somehow there were too many sheets on the table - and one dark thought sneaked into his mind, but he completely refused to acknowledge it. And then his gaze, blurred from sleep, was finally able to focus on sheets that were not like her neat notes - somewhere torn around the edges, somewhere sprinkled with coffee, all wrinkled and written up with oblique, uneven pillars of words - by his own hand.

He felt the warmth in his cheeks (how could he have forgotten that he himself made bookmarks in the text - while using scraps of his poems, the only paper lying at hand in his desk?).

Ulana, apparently, noticed his embarrassment. "Don’t worry, Valery," she said with a faint smile in her voice, "I did not read them."

“Good”.

“But what I saw by chance seemed very good to me”.

He shook his head, feeling how stupidly the corners of his lips were lifting up on his face. “If they were good, now I would have been drinking tea with Akhmadulina and discussing Pasternak’s legacy.”

He thought it was bad taste - to talk about the lack of 100 rem in his liver in this other, literary life, but Khomyuk understood everything anyway - he read it in the glitter of her eyes and a sad smile. This sad image suited her- really suited, but Valery didn’t want her pity - he himself knew that he was pitiful. However, as if hearing his thoughts, she understood this idea without any words. Therefore, with a grin, designed to slightly raise the general mood, she replied:

“I'm afraid my poetic skills leave a lot to be desired.”

“I know a lot of poetess, Ulana, but for the first time I meet a nuclear physicist who would be a woman and at the same time a leading expert in their institute”.

Her smile faded a little.

“Do not think that it is in my merits or mind - rather, this is the fault of the system”.

Valery’s gaze rested on the floor — the brown linoleum of his kitchen, which he needed to change a long time ago, but somehow never had time for it. _This is also my fault_ , he wanted to say — he wanted to and could not because he was a coward — and he was a party member from the moment of his birth in the family of an ardent communist. Instead, he took up the appliances and began to eat. Ulana also didn’t say anything else, so they ate in silence, only the radio sang in the background with Vysotsky’s voice.

Five minutes later, he suddenly had the idea that Ulana somehow resembled Pugacheva, which he told her about. It seems he made her laugh.

“No, Valery, now you are really making fun of me. Maybe I sing a little better than I write, but…”

Valeria's eyebrows went up.

“You sing?” he asked with a drop of mistrust in his voice - for some reason it was difficult for him to seriously imagine her on stage (and the comparison came more from the hairstyle, but he didn’t add this).

“Believe it or not, but when I was young I sang a lot, especially at school - I performed at all holidays and events”.

“And then?”

“And then just stopped”

“Just stopped…” repeated Valery and went quiet. How many people's destinies went into a different rut because they just stopped doing something? Take them, for example. If she hadn't stopped singing in her youth, and he - writing poetry, maybe now they would be preparing for some concert at the Palace of Culture - he would write songs, she would perform them, and they would have a wonderful creative duet ... He suddenly remembered that Andrei played the guitar very well (oh, how he loved to listen to him by the fire while hiking in the woods - but that was a long time ago — so long that it was difficult to immediately remember the exact year when it stopped) — maybe, would they would perform in trio ..

_But who then would go to Chernobyl?_

No, all these thoughts of “what if”, “and how” led only to dead ends - or worse, back to the depth of regrets, the burden of which on his shoulders only increased every year. Therefore, he sent a stream of his thoughts in a different direction - so let's say, yesterday it was decided that Ulana would stay with him that night and today. They (already they?) still had one free day, and he suddenly had an idea.

“Ulana, have you been to Moscow? I mean, except…”

“I'm afraid, only once, there was no time for wandering about”

He nodded; for some reason, both of them did not want to say the name of Chernobyl out loud now.

“Then ... Would you like to have a walk?”

How strange, Valery felt that he was 20 again, that he was still a student who just passed the summer session.

 

In the afternoon, he took her to his favourite cafe, in which he had not been for a good three years, then they went to the Sparrow Hills, where they walked and ate ice cream. He, as always, dropped his on the jacket - but when he heard Ulana's iridescent laugh, he suddenly thought that for the sake of that sound he was ready to drop at least a thousand horns on himself. They talked about everything and nothing at the same time — about Voyager-2, about the discovery of high-temperature conductivity, about favourite books — and not a word about Pripyat or the upcoming battle in Vienna. Valery realized with a surprise that this was the first time that they were talking about something other than what had been slowly killing them over the past few months. And that felt good.

When they went to meet the dawn on the bank of the Moscow River, he suddenly thought that it might be how graduates of the 41st felt. Simple human happiness, it seemed, was a stone’s throw away - and then very few people could utter that alluring word of 7 letters so as not to turn their thoughts to something that would never happen. Because at dawn the War began.

And he and Ulana had a conference that would begin soon (no, of course, before that, they would have to go through the preliminary meeting today, the KGB would most likely have something to say, and in the evening Boris was going to come to him, and Valery asked Ulana to be there too. Maybe he did so because he knew Shcherbina in anger, and something prompted him that he would not be very pleased with their little conspiracy behind Sharkov. Or maybe he wanted to extend their little paradise a little more, sit still for a while before the storm).

In the predawn twilight, they walked along the embankment and drank Zhigulevskoe - a striking difference from their previous nights, filled with vodka and smoked with cigarettes. When the first rays of the sun illuminated the edges of the rare clouds with a golden border, they sat on the bench and began to simply observe how the sky went from the dark to a mixture of transparent blue and tender pink with an addition of yellow and orange. At some point, Ulana laid her head on his shoulder, and if in the first second he twitched from unexpected closeness, then he felt a strange warm feeling spreading over his chest. He thought for a moment and then with unexpected courage hugged her shoulder, pressing her closer to him. She sighed. He was smiling, looking at the horizon.

He thought that together they might just survive all this.

And then the black Volga stopped in front of them, and the darkness of its opened cabin seemed to obscure the whole sun.

 

***

 

_23:28, August 23, 2 days before the beginning._

 

Boris was more or less in a good mood.

_“Fucking morons!” - the sound of a punch on the table. All the dishes bounced and gasped. “Do you even imagine what position you put me in? Can you imagine what I was talking about with Sharkov?” Silence. “About you fucking two!”, this time a chair flies to the floor. "Romeo and Juliet, fuck me like that. Shooting!..” he waves his hand, “Shooting is what lays ahead of you with such meetings. We either follow the KGB deal or later we will have to negotiate with the Devil! ”_

_“Isn't this the same thing?” Ulana asks._

_“DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER!” involuntarily Valery has to close his eyes from the thunder of man’s voice. Ulana, it seems, is now drinking tea from a saucer. With a slurping._

_Boris sighs and turns to him. Valery does not take his eyes off the oilcloth tablecloth, which showed dark semicircles of spilt tea. He suddenly thought that this probably looks like his face because of the bags under his eyes._

_“Valery, all right, to hell with Khomyuk - I've already guessed that she is not afraid of anything, damn woman, but what about you?”_

_Valery finally finds the strength to raise his eyes on a man and says slowly, with the collocation, putting the side of his palm on the table on each word: “We didn’t do anything prohibited by law ...”_

_“Of course you did not,” Boris throws up his hands, sinking heavily into the chair. "But you gave the KGB agents even more reason to distrust us". He is rubbing his face with his hand. "Scientists..."._

Boris rose heavily from his chair and turned to Ulana.

“Khomyuk, make sure that during the conference his pants don't fall off”.

It was said without any malice or irritation - on the contrary, a smile could be guessed in the wrinkles in the corners of his lips. A grin even. Ulana nodded in response, and Boris silently headed for the exit. After a moment, Valery was on his feet.

He caught up with him in the hallway, when Boris was turning the doorknob, but as he heard his approach, he stopped.

Valery wanted to say something, but not a single suitable word occurred to him, so he simply extended his hand. It slightly trembled; Valery, as never before, clearly felt that everything depended on whether Boris would accept it.

Will he understand that this is more than a simple "goodbye"? Will he see in the gesture of friendship the last request not to judge him, no matter what will happen next?

In the silence of the darkened space, Boris looked for a few moments at the outstretched hand - and then firmly grasped it and quickly pulled Valery to himself, squeezing him in one of his bear hugs.

“Take care, Valera”.

 

***

 

_9:01, August 24, 1 day before the beginning._

 

 _A click, a rattle - a click, a rattle_ , and so on three more times - just five digits - the way that his finger knew like an old path which he walked dozens, hundreds of times.

But the last, sixth figure remained - a jump from the path into the unknown, which Valery could not do; his hand hung a couple of centimetres from the phone, not daring to either pull back or come close.

Valery had not called this number for exactly twenty-one years. Maybe it wasn’t working for a long time, or it was given to another person, or no one will just pick up the phone, or-

There were so many “or”, so many conditions that were impossible to predict without calling. But again to open the door to the past, to that forgotten, covered with dust, happiness in a broken frame?

Musya jumped on the nightstand with the phone and, meowing, rubbed against his hand. Valery sighed. Did he have a choice?

The dial clicked under his finger, and the last digit flew over the wire to the communications station.

The whistles went, and the heart, like a mad beast, beat in the chest, the palm that squeezed the phone down to the white knuckles instantly began to sweat. A strange feeling, but Valery hoped very much that he was just ringing into the void, and no one would respond from the other side.

The phone was lifted.

“Yes? said a ringing like twenty years ago male voice, but now there was a certain steel edge in it, hardening which was the imprint of time and experience.

“Andrei ...” he croaked into the phone.

 

Yesterday, Valery walked around the whole building - but there was no one to leave Musya to, no one to ask to look after her for next week. Neither did Valery have any acquaintances to whom he could give this task - so there was nothing else for him to do except to call the only number which he knew by heart.

An hour later, he was already opening the door - and Valery froze in the hallway, amazed by how little Andrei had changed after so many years. All the same Herculean body, towering over him for a full head, with broad shoulders, the back straight as a string, the hands of the rower and the legs of an athlete, he looked like an ancient Greek demigod from the fields of Arcadia. The golden wreath of his curls still shone in the sun - and only his iron gaze of the captain of a spaceship showed his true age.

Andrei smiled and extended his hand to him, like to an old friend. Valery shook it, and this sensation reminded him that once, in the silence of his apartment, he could hold this palm in his hand for as long as he wanted, grope every finger and drop a kiss on every knuckle. But now, after two seconds allowed by good manners he released it - and strangely, the emptiness in his hand did not burn him as then, at their last meeting.

“Well, where is your lady of heart?” Andrei asked with a grin.

This question threw Valery into a real stupor, even confusion, mixed up a little with embarrassment. Then he realized - this is how Andrei was talking about the cat, which became an unexpected reason for their reunion. Valery looked around - Musya was nowhere to be found.

“Eh, sitting somewhere ... She is a little afraid of strangers, but, in general, I think she will get used to you quickly”.

“You said the same about Barsik, you old devil,” Andrew answered in the same joking tone and pointed to the scar on the upper side of his palm. “And we immediately formed a mutual sympathy with him”.

Yes, maybe they started on the wrong foot, Valery could say, but then he could swear that Barsik loved Andrei more than he loved his owner - he walked behind him as if chained to him all the time, sat on his shoulders and slept with him first massaging his belly. Sometimes it came to the point of absurdity - they could not calmly kiss so that Barsik would not try to bite Valery on the nose.

“No, no,” Valery chuckled. “It's all as I say. Musya is a very quiet cat, but kind”.

“Reminds me of someone,” Andrew winked at him and walked into the living room calling out loud “kitty-kitty”. But Valery did not move, his eyes fixed on the floor.

He was completely confused that Andrei behaved as if there was no hot love or cold hatred between them. As if there wasn’t a time when they came to each other’s window, walked around evening Moscow, and at night closed in his bedroom to not go out until the next afternoon.

If now Boris called him a naive idiot, back then Valery was a naive dreamer who built the castles of the future out of the sand of their love with the hope that they would stand forever. The ocean of life washed them away in ten years.

All that they made together they literally broke in one evening - but  _how_ did they break it. It seemed to Valery that everything had started from a small thing, but it could actually have been going for a long time; after a particularly nervous day at work, when Valery was late for their dinner together, Andrei made a remark about it, he threw some imprudent word (he could never remember what it was), Andrei answered - and here they go. All the accumulated grievances, small and large, all cavils, disappointments and passions raging in their still young bodies seemed to have broken the dam and flowed out like a violent river of insults. That evening something more was broken than their favourite mugs, something that could not be repaired with any tape.

When Andrei left, slamming the door, Valery remained to pick up the wreckage of his life - only to find that there was nothing else in it. He put all his free time, all his love and care into one single person - and when they left, Valery suddenly realized that he was alone - completely and irrevocably alone in the whole world. Therefore, with renewed vigour, he dived into academic work, and only sometimes, when he heard about Andrei’s affairs through acquaintances of his acquaintances, Valeriy stopped for a moment and looked back — at what was and what never would be ...

“Valerka?” a sonant cry from the living room pulled him out of the memories, returning him to the darkness of the hallway. Valery looked at his watch - the minute hand just ran through the number “5”. It was a little less than half an hour before the arrival of the car which will take him to the airport, and there would be two transfers to Vienna.

If events unfold as they suppose with Ulana, he may never see Andrei again - just like the few years left to him, actually. Therefore, today he decided to play along with him, to pretend that they were just old friends and former fellow students who met for the first time after graduation.

“I’m coming, Andrei,” he said with ease that he didn’t feel. “I’m coming”.

 

***

 

_10:55, August 25, 5 minutes before the beginning._

 

Valery felt that despite the air conditioning his entire back was wet. He slightly raised his hand, palm up — under his desk, of course — and watched his fingers shake.

According to the plan of the delegation, he was supposed to submit most of the report, and because of this perspective his sight was blacking out for moments. His throat was so dry that it seemed if he opened his mouth sand would pour from it; the whole body was trembling in fever. He looked up and blinked at the camera flashes (he had to admit that the institute’s meetings which he usually spoke at were smaller) when he felt that something warm and soft squeezed his palm.

Valery looked down and saw their hands intertwined, his and Ulana. His gaze focused at them, then climbed up the sleeve of her jacket - and then dived into the blue sea of her eyes. She smiled at him, very lightly, and tightened her grip on his palm. He smiled back. It seems that the trembling calmed down a bit.

 

_14:03, 3 hours in._

 

Valery could not remember that he ever drank so much water - but this was the only way to get rid of hoarseness and coughing from tireless speaking.

Although Valery did not feel the space around him, concentrating on the task, he could not help but notice how from time to time some government official in the delegation twitched at his words, and Shcherbina kicked him under the table - but then they were stricken by something like apathy (or lurking anger?). Boris looked with an empty gaze somewhere over the crowd, and Charkov’s man (Boris pointed him out beforehand) was writing something all the time.

 _Well, let it be_.

He and Ulana were constantly changing, and they were on page 275 of the report, it seemed? Several times they were applauded - and Valeriy understood why, for he could not help admiring both the work done by Ulana and the combination of brevity and depth of her speech. Not once did she lift up her hand for an excess time, what to say about dropping her sheets (for the first time, Valery watched with some exhausted despair as his documents flew in different directions, and now something told him that it was not the last). And yet Ulana, too, was beginning to tire, he saw this by the way she firmly clasped her hands as if chaining herself by them to the hall like an anchor.

“...And Valery Alekseevich will tell you about the alleged causes of the accident”.

(God, he hoped to survive until the moment the group of experts from “Kurchatov” would join the report).

He got up. The hall rocked ominously with every step he took.

 _“Valery, you have to tell the world the truth”_ \- the conversation echoed in his head which felt like a lifetime ago, but it was only three days. " _You have to tell the truth, and to hell with our lives_."

_“Do you understand what will happen then? Even if we are not shot for declassifying state secrets, they will definitely transfer us to the rank of second-class citizens. No social support. No medical care. It will be as we have not even existed. We will be cooked alive in our own bodies and die in agony... ”_

_“Two lives - for the happiness of all mankind. If that's the price, I'm willing to pay it”._

_He did not answer._

Four steps to the podium.

 _What is the colour of Danube at sunset?_ he wondered suddenly. Although they arrived yesterday afternoon, their walk through Vienna ended in 15 meters from the taxi to the hotel entrance - well, and the adjacent territory nearby, but the river couldn’t be seen from there.

Now it was unlikely that he would ever find out.

He had only two steps left when he realized - felt with the back of his head that Ulana was looking at him with _that very look_. It made him smile, just a bit.

_How it was in Pasternak’s poem?_

"Murky forest, stagnant water,

And a log of fallen fir,

No escape, it doesn’t matter.

What’s predestined will occur”.

 

***

 

_21: 41, August 25, 6 hours after._

 

Together with the sun, lazily rolling over the horizon, a warm August evening outside the window was taking its leave.

Nothing would be the same, Valery was clearly aware of this. And not only because of the catastrophe itself - what he and she said today - if that was not a sentence, it meant that he didn’t know his country well.

They were sitting in Boris's room, and the man was saying something in the background. Valery usually always listened attentively to him - they passed too much to not listen - but honestly, now he simply did not have the strength - and the fact that he was a deadman, a walking dead he understood without too well without a reminder.

Before that, Boris shouted, waved his hands, but apparently, the forces began to leave him this iron, inflexible person too. And these rare interruptions, as if he was running out of air, but this was not the case - if you didn’t know about them, you might not even notice. But they didn’t hide from Valery - as well as from Ulana, he saw it in her eyes when they looked at each other in every instant of silence. Gazing at her, he tried to convey the thought " _in a couple of months it will be the same with me_ " Ulana only blinked in response - but nevertheless in a special way as if to say “ _I don’t care._ ” He sighed and turned to Boris. " _I'm sorry_ ". Their eyes met - the man fell silent and seemed to internally sag, shrank even. Then he nodded, sat for a bit - and continued his tirade with a new force. And so it was a long time - until ...

 _Bam!_ Valery flinched - a newspaper in English was slammed down on the table at which they were sitting. “The Sun”.

"Scientists - lovers save the world" - and photos. From the process where they smiled at each other. From walking through Vienna where they were holding hands. Valery was sure that they only touched for a second, but the photographer was able to catch this flying moment (he thought that he would like to cut out this photo and keep it for himself - _God, everything is so stupid, but I just lost my mind)_. He ran his eyes over the article itself: the first page - the eulogy of pure love, disobedient to the horrors of the communist system - and only at the end there were the details of the catastrophe itself from his words today.

“To say you two showed an excellent melodrama would be an understatement. A little more practice and you can tour with the Bolshoi Theater. The foreign public loves you”.

“Boris…”

“Valera, at least once in your fucking life think before you say something - especially now”.

Valery stayed silent

“If he listened to such advice, Boris Evdokimovich, thousands of people would be dead by now” Ulana, as always, spoke impassively, but in the tone her inner strength, her steel core glimpsed through.

Boris waved his fist at her. "I swear, Khomyuk ..."  but he never finished his threat, instead loudly dropping an uncorked bottle of vodka on the table. “Let us drink, damn you, for the repose of our eternal souls,” and without waiting for others he knocked over the first shot.

 

 _From 2 to 5 in the morning, on August 26_.

 

When Valery later recalled that night, part of the memories eluded him. However, he could say for sure that they drank - mostly in silence. Then, when alcohol began to kick in, Valery remembered, he began to argue with Ulana about something, and quite actively. Judging by the sad look of Boris, and the fact that he just continued to pour himself, not participating in the conversation, they argued about science.

 Actually, when they were two phrases away from getting personal in the dispute over black holes, in the predawn twilight they suddenly discovered that Boris was snoring loudly, hanging from his chair. Not to say that Valery himself was well on his feet, but Ulana, as the soberest, helped him to put the sleeping man on the bed, while she put a glass of water and headache tablets on the bedside table.

They left the room together. Stood for a bit, looking at each other. Valery could not say what was going through the head of the woman in front of him at that moment, but he understood his desires quite clearly - and from the realization of this he suddenly began to be shy again.

“I will... accompany you,” he finally said, looking at the floor and putting his hands in his pockets, and together, supporting each other from time to time, they headed towards her number. Stopping at the door, they began to take leave of each other - Ulana leaned over, apparently wanting to kiss him on the cheek, but Valery, at that moment, still looking at the floor, shifted on his place, and so it happened that she caught him on the nose. Ulana giggled, he kind of smiled. She said something about the second attempt, he really could not answer, then he remembered the taste of alcohol on his lips, and then nothing.

 

_Morning of 26th August._

 

The stray ray of the sun blinded his barely opened eye, and Valery jerked, burying himself into something soft that tickled his nose. Then came the sensation of something warm, lying nearby - and he was hugging it tightly, pressing it to himself. He opened one eye, then the second — Ulana slept next to him, her black hair glistened in the light of the morning sun, which had broken through the gap between the curtains. However, it was not this that surprised Valery - but the fact that they were both dressed.

 Ulana was in a nightdress and a bathrobe on top of it. He was wearing his white tank top and his yesterday trousers. He could not see the time on the clock without glasses but guessing from his feelings and the sun it was still quite early.

 He again looked down at Ulana in his hands - to be met with the silent gaze of her blue eyes, which seemed to be looking at his very core.

 “Good morning,” she said in a still sleepy voice.

 Instead of answering, he bent down and kissed her (but this didn’t work out very well because she yawned at that moment, accidentally biting his lip. It was painful and funny at the same time).

Somewhere on the border of consciousness the thought flashed that today they were to have the second day of the conference — answers to the numerous questions of the IAEA members, another day, maybe two - various meetings and commissions would be held, some decisions would be made and promises would be sworn which soon would be broken. Somewhere in this chain, an awareness flared that Boris would surely come him to his room, would not find him there and would start looking for him all over the hotel - only to come to Ulana’s number and violently drum at her door with threats to kick it out - but even this picture couldn’t lift him out of bed now.

He decided that life could wait a bit - or at least not notice one stolen hour of happiness from it.

 

***

 

_The evening of 30th August_

 

“Knock, knock” - the two lightest blows to the wall, from which the baby was still lightly falling from the walls, made him almost jump in his place.

_"I'm alright"._

"Knock-knock, knock".

_“Got it. I'm fine too”._

Valery couldn’t decide - the fact that they were put in neighbouring cells, incredibly close and yet inaccessible far from each other - was this a grace or punishment. He was glad to hear even one sound from her, but he couldn’t help but wish to feel her breath on his cheek, see the shine of her eyes - but 30 centimetres of concrete between them were as good as 100 million light years between two stars.

(To never see her but just catch her brilliance, which will reach for him even millions of years later after she will burn out and go dark - that's what he saw during those long hours of silence, when the walls and the smell of fear evanished and remained somewhere far away, and the immense cosmos embraced him like an old friend).

It was all prosaic: as soon as they got off the plane from Vienna in the morning, a familiar car stopped just before the ramp, but this time instead of the hotel, it took them to Lubyanka. They were put in neighbouring cells and barred from talking, but it was nearing 10 o'clock in the evening, and still, no one came to them.

At first, Valery was nervous - he was biting his nails, straightening his tie, tormented both by the prospect of finally being brought before the deputy head of the 1st department, and waiting in ignorance of what would happen next. Then he calmed down - no, he probably resigned himself, and gave himself up to fantasies …

Heavy and numerous steps in the corridor hit the ears harder than the bell tocsin. Heart fluttered against his will - and then the iron door opened and more than ever tired-looking Boris silently nodded to him, indicating the way out.

They went for Ulana. (“ _Reminds me of something - and you, Valery Alekseevich?_ ” - Valery did not know how, after all, that had happened, Ulana found strength in herself for jokes, but he answered it with a faint smile). Then she turned to Boris, and although her face was serious again, a strange softness appeared in her eyes, which Valery could not explain. She silently nodded to the man, who, in response, bowed his head slightly, and the two of them, with some new understanding, looked at him.

The gusts of the already cold air burned his throat, but Valery couldn’t get enough of that August night - so sweet the taste of freedom was. When the wind finally blew out the stale Lubyansky air from his head, Valery felt that he was looking at Boris with some new sight, as if he was seeing him for the first time, but with everything that he had learned about him during their time together in Chernobyl in mind.

He gently disentangled his fingers from Ulana’s and tried to catch up with him. The burning emptiness in her hand suddenly reminded them of the precariousness of their position and how close they were from the abyss.

This thought stirred in his heart like a snake, and he unexpectedly became scared - scared as he never was in the KGB cell. On stiff legs, he hurried after Boris, and when he could not go flush with him, he shouted after him:

“How ... how did you-”

“Circle of accountability, Valera. Circle of accountability”.

 _Oh._ Suddenly, the summer night ceased to be so intoxicatingly fresh - instead, another gust of a howling wind hit him in the chest with cold penetrating to the bones, and in the shadows behind the humming lamp posts ugly shadows began to move on the edge of sight.

Here it is, a deal with the Devil, the terrible reality of which, alas, no theological disputes could reject.

He made an incomprehensible throat sound between a laugh and a sob. Of all the possible emotions, for some reason now he felt anger prowling in his chest — at himself for his naivety, at the government for their surveillance and at life in general.

 _Why?_ Only one question flittered like a bird in his head.

He so childishly, deeply and clearly, felt the injustice of what was going on that he wanted to just fall to the ground and burst into tears, beat his fists on the asphalt and curse the Universe, that by the will of coincidences it had placed exactly him exactly here exactly now.

_God, there are 6 billion people on earth, so why me? Why? Why? WHY?_

There was no explanation in the noise in his head - only new myriads of questions, which in nanoseconds of nerve endings’ work were born and died, never getting answers to them.

Therefore, Valery continued to follow Boris with a frozen expression on his face.

“Boris- I mean, thanks, but you-”

“If you want, you can return to the cell”, Boris shouted over his shoulder, without slowing down the step towards the two UAZ vehicles, “But I am personally going to have a drink”. Then he stopped abruptly at the cars and took some piece of paper out of his pocket.

Valery's heart fell. Ulana froze in place next to him.

“Your ticket, Khomyuk,” and he added quieter, “I'm sorry”.

Why did life allow him in the midst of a world-wide nuclear catastrophe, in the midst of the sufferings of present and future people, find friendship and love in the twilight of his years — just to snatch them from him in a few months along with his still beating heart, where they had already taken the first roots?

(Suddenly, it was quiet in his head. There was no noise - there was nothing at all).

While getting in the car, Ulana dropped the ticket - by the way, she hesitated a little, Valery immediately understood everything, picked up a piece of paper and handed it to her.

(So, Belorussky railway station, evening. Well he could understand this himself).

She nodded back. "Thank you".

 

***

 

_31st August, 19:04._

 

They stood near the stairs to the carriage. The conductor approached them twice, warning that the train would leave on time and that it was time for them to get on. For some reason, Valery felt sick today, but he could not accurately explain his condition. His heart ached every time he looked at Ulana, ached when he looked at the train that would take her back to Minsk.

Finally, after a few minutes of meaningless conversations, she approached him and gave him the lightest kiss on the cheek.

"Take care of yourself, Valery." And without saying anything else, she turned away and climbed into the carriage, and, sending him one last glance, disappeared inside. The train started moving.

 _“Farewell”_ \- this word had never spoken today but he heard it as clearly as if she had said it out loud.

Valery felt something hot on his cheek. He raised his hand and ran it over the face - and in his palm he had a bit of red lipstick and moisture. A tear shed for what was and what would never be. A tear, for his life and hers.

And finally, the thought that had been on the border of his consciousness all this time and now finally found a way out, seemed to obscure the sky.

He was alone for so long that he did not understand how lonely he was. But now, after feeling the warmth of the other body at his side, feeling the beat of another's heart under the hand in time with his, he could not let it go. Not now.

And Valery ran, ran as fast as he had not run for thirty years.

“Ulana!” He shouted after the speeding train. "Ulana!" He saw her surprised face in the window. "Stay!" The face has disappeared.

He almost ran into the other mourners once, another, jumped over the standing bag, but it was already hard for him to keep up with the car which was gaining speed with a roar.

Somewhere in the background, the whistles of the police and station workers were already ringing in the air, but he did not pay attention to them. The platform was ending in a few tens of meters.

Then the last door of the car swung open, and from there first a suitcase flew out, rolling on the asphalt, and then Ulana herself appeared, her hair fluttering in the wind.

Not a word was said (and it would have been difficult), but they were not needed. Everything was in the intersection of the two views - a question, hope and promise, with one stroke of the eyelashes turned into an eternal oath.

_"Will you catch me?" "I will"._

She jumped into his open arms to the cries of supervisors from the car and people on the platform. Valery spun on the spot from the force of the strike, and for one terrible moment it seemed to him that they would fall, but he managed to stay on the feet. They pressed into each other so tightly, as if they wanted to merge their bodies, to become one. Perhaps it was not far from the truth.

Ulana pressed her face into his chest and said with a grin that he did not see but could hear "Boris will kill us."

No matter how dead he was, he still could smile.

“I'm afraid he will have to queue up first.”

They were silent for a time.

“Ulana?”

“Yes?” the sound of her voice was muffled by his jacket.

“Would you go to Chernobyl if ... if you knew what would happen?”

Ulana lifted her head for an instant to look into his eyes.

“If I knew that I would receive a lethal dose of radiation until I find an answer that I would not be allowed to speak? I think yes. I think I would go through a thousand Chernobyls because I…”

She looked down - he saw the word that was forming on her lips, but at the last moment, with a smile, it turned into another.

“Because I'm a scientist”. She looked at him again. “And I would have done it, even if I had never met you. But …” Something glittered in her eyes (tears? Probably, he was crying now too), “with you it was a little…”

“Easier?”

“Yes, easier”.

Valery leaned to Ulana's hair and inhaled deeply her scent. He suddenly remembered that they both worked in state institutions - and he could barely restrain himself from a fit of laughter. It was strange to worry about an academic career that now did not exist at all after Vienna. It was strange, all the more, to worry about it, when their bodies probably in total had twice the dose higher than the prescribed one. Maybe they will be shot tomorrow, or the radiation will do its job, and they will die in five years. In any case, it was them who asked Gorbachev for permission to kill three people — accordingly, they would have to pay this debt - Boris, Ulana and him. Tooth for a tooth. Life for life.

But none of this mattered on the last evening of the summer of 1986 when he held her in his arms and the rattling train was going into the horizon.

To the west.

 

***

 

_April 26, 1988, two years later._

_Second anniversary_

 

Valery smoothed his thinning hair and stopped at the door of the living room, heavily leaning on the doorjamb. Neither he nor she was allowed to be properly medically treated. 

 _Such is the price,_ he thought. _And we paid it._

He looked at how Ulana tuned her guitar at the last moment, how she sat up straight and, winking at the girl in the first row, calmly met the looks of the guests. Among them there was not a single former colleague, not a single person from their past lives dating before the mark under the number 1986 - only comrades in misfortune - Chernobyl victims. Under her serious gaze, everyone fell silent right away.

She took a deep breath and said firmly and clearly “ “Our epilogue” ”, but Valery felt as if her voice had faltered for one flying moment.

No, probably he just imagined it.

And then her soft, ear-enveloping singing floated above the living room.

“ _Autumn, foliage_

_turns into dust,_

_The sun runs over the water._

_I do not feel pain,_

_I do not feel fear._

_After all, I look with you_

_at this sunset,_

_Our last sunset_

_above the river._

Their eyes met.

“ _After all, I look with you_

_at this sunset,_

_Our last sunset_

_above the river_ _…”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please if you liked my story write a comment, even the smallest one - I would greatly appreciate it! And sorry about all the mistakes and typos - English is my second language but feel free to point them out! Also the original poem at the end was in Russian and I have no idea how to translate it properly so this is the closest translation I could manage.


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